Project Description

Gedichte zu Prometheus

Konstantia Gourzi complements the performance of Beethoven’s “Prometheus” with her own composition.

The Project

The myth of Prometheus is connected to the struggle of attaining knowledge and truth. The Greek word for it is gnosis, a mix of knowledge, search for the truth and being privy to it. These different point of views help to see this myth in a new way.

The question of tradition is very important – linked as it is to awareness of our roots, how to respect them and how to transfer them into today’s life. The question is how to combine today’s possibilities, the open borders and retaining the individualities, in the composition.

In 2005, Christoph Poppen and the Münchner Kammerorchester asked Konstantia Gourzi to add a composition of her own to Beethoven’s “Prometheus”. To write a piece that simply precedes or follows Beethoven’s cycle seemed too distant, conventional, even dangerous. The idea to alternate her own miniatures with Beethoven’s miniatures gave an additional perspective, more time and a different scale to the topic of Prometheus. Nevertheless, the pieces are also compositions in their own right.

The Gedichte zu Prometheus are another enriching experience in working with exceptional musical sources after the compositional completion of Haydn’s fragmentary opera Philemon und Baucis. In both cases, the work was closely connected to the musical and aesthetic sources, even the origin of the topic, which made the project so attractive.